Crème fraîche and its cousins

"For me, crème fraîche is the number one top of the pops cook's ingredient in the cream family." Delia Smith

My lemon slice was pretty yummy, and I took some crème fraîche along to eat it with - and I think I converted one of my granddaughters to the joys of crème fraîche - but then she does also like Brie. Crème fraîche is now available in your local supermarket, but you have to search a bit and it's a bit expensive. Coles used to have their own in-house brand but it seems to have disappeared - it certainly wasn't there yesterday.

I had hoped that the fact that they had their own brand meant that at last crème fraîche was going to be widely available. In France it seems to be round the other way - it's almost the only kind of cream you can get. But then I read in Wikipedia:

"In French-speaking countries, crème fraîche may refer to either the thick fermented product, crème fraîche épaisse or fermentée, or to liquid cream, crème fraîche liquide or fleurette. In these countries, crème fraîche without qualification normally refers to liquid cream, with the thick form usually called crème épaisse."

So I was probably suffering under a slight misapprehension. Nevertheless there was a heck of a lot of crème épaisse.

So why should we get excited about it and what is it anyway?

The 'real deal' stuff is an appellation controlée product from Normandy, specifically from Isigny and looks like this:

Thick, creamy and slightly yellow in colour. It has a slightly sour taste but is not as sour as sour cream, or yoghurt and is richer in taste - so tangy rather than sour. Originally all it was, was unpasteurised cream that had been allowed to stand at room temperature to thicken - and in the process acquire the slight sourness that came from the natural cultures in the air. Some of the real thing may still be made this way - the French are still able to use unpasteurised milk, but here (and elsewhere) it is made by adding a culture to the fresh double (or pure) cream. This thickens it and gives it that special tang. It is rich in fat of course, so not a product for every day, but cooks love it because it won't split or curdle if you boil it, like all other creams - including sour cream. And it will keep for a few weeks too.

Sour cream is sort of made the same way, but it is made from single cream, has less fat and cannot be boiled. Yoghurt has the culture added to milk heated to just below boiling and clotted cream - which I don't think we can get here - or only in specialist dairy places - is made by heating the pure double cream to evaporate some of the liquids - no culture added here. Just a very rich cream with 55% fat content.

And just as you can make your own yoghurt, so you can make your own crème fraîche - or at least an approximation and it is really, really simple. You just add buttermilk to cream in a non-reactive container and stand it at room temperature for 12-24 hours. How much cream, how much buttermilk? Well it doesn't seem to matter all that much - or the time either, though it would seem it needs to be at least 12 hours. The two recipes I found both had 2 tablespoons of buttermilk, but one had 1 cup of pure cream (the best you can find) and the other had 1 pint. So I guess the answer is to experiment a bit. When it is at the thickness and sourness you require store it in the fridge - the fermentation will cease in the fridge. Might give it a go - although I need to find something to do with the buttermilk - it comes in such big containers - scones maybe.